Into California... And an interesting first night in the state... We drove from Oregon through miles and miles of the Redwoods Forests - huuuuuuuuge trees which would make even the Atkinson family feel like midgets. One tree was so big, it had a hole cut through it so you could drive your car through it. Ant made friends with a talking giant and also made friends with a biker who we bumped into again at some traffic lights later that day. A bit of traffic light chit chat later and we found ourselves with the biker in a random local yocal bar eating steak sandwiches. All was going well until some drunk 'gang-banger' kids starting kicking the door of the bar in. They walked away again as soon as the landlady asked them to leave but turns out biker boy was after a bit of a fight... I had visions of those films where the kids come back with bigger boys... so we waved goodbye to our biker friend and made a quick exit to the nearest motel.

After that, we thought we'd step it up a notch and spent a day cycling through the wine country of Sonoma. Funny how the wine tastes better and better the more tastings you have. And funny how the cycling seems to get harder and harder the more tastings you have.

We then ventured over to the Sierra Nevada and got the hiking legs working again in the mountains around Lake Tahoe in preparation for hitting our first of the big ones - Yosemite National Park. Such a shame we can't put any pics on yet as it really is stunning. That is, the parts of the park where we could escape the tourists. Yes, I know we're tourists as well, but I just hate other tourists. Those who cruise around in their beast-mobiles, who stop when everyone else stops and who can't even be bothered to get out of the car to take a photo and instead point and shoot from the comfort of their seat. So we made every effort to avoid the hordes and ventured into parts where we then feared encountering the other type of beast that inhabits the park - the bear. Hmmm tourists vs bears... Luckily we made it through our night's camping with neither a tourist nor bear invasion...